screen resolution could be higher (but Retina model has that covered).great screen brightness and viewing angle.backlit keyboard with brightness adjustment.responsive OS makes light work of your day-to-day projects.After a week of use it feels just as effortless now as it did when it first loaded with incredible speed - and it's things like that which make all the difference in day-to-day schedules. Paired with the improved connections and all that internal power it's still up there with the best laptops on the market today. Externally it might not be quite so fresh, but it's still a classic. Overall there's still a lot of love to be had for the MacBook Pro. Most Ultrabooks, however, haven't quite managed to combine the power with the overall built quality of Apple's devices quite yet - that's something that Apple really has got down to an art. There are similar Windows-based PCs out there that will cost many hundreds of pounds less, and that does pose the argument to turn to the main opposition as a consideration. There's also no avoiding the fact that this is a pricey machine. With that in mind it might make more sense not to spend £1500-1800+ and instead wait for a 2013 release or plump up the extra cash for the SSD-loaded, RAM-fuelled Retina display version.
It still looks good, but is just less groundbreaking than it was at its inception, and the release of the MacBook Pro with Retina display really overshadows this 15-inch model. That said the MacBook Pro design has been around for a long time now.